Slike strani
PDF
ePub

belt, a region where volcanoes are active and where the earth's crust has long been buckling and breaking at a geologically rapid rate of change. The Rotorua area of the North Island is world famous for its geo-thermal activities, boiling lakes, boiling mud, geysers, etc.

The climate is temperate and changeable, very similar to that in Britain except that winds are more frequent and there is a higher average sunshine. Normal temperatures range from 43.6° in June to 61-3° in January. The average rainfall for the greater part of the country is from 25-60 inches, but because of the mountain ranges can vary from as much as 300 inches to 13 inches.

There are 66.4 million acres of occupied farm land of which about half are in native and improved grass. There are 2.3 million dairy cows, 59.9 million sheep and 4.8 million beef cattle.

A census of population is taken every five years, the last being in June 1967 when the figure was given as 2,725,643. This figure has risen to 2,820,814 at 31st March 1970. In 1969 the birth rate was 22-47 per 1,000 (Maori 37-38) and the death rate 8-68 per 1,000. English is the official language and used by all, but a large proportion of the Maori population of 225,000 are bi-lingual in English and Maori. Christianity is the main religion and the 1966 census showed the chief groups to be Church of England 33.7 per cent, Presbyterian 21.8 per cent, Roman Catholic 15.9 per cent and Methodist 7.0 per cent; other denominations and sects include Ratana (Maori). Primary and secondary education is free and universal. University education is free to all holders of the University Entrance Examination and about one tenth of pupils leaving Secondary Schools go to Universities. Technical education is being developed. There is no illiteracy.

The urban areas which have the main concentrations of population are, in the North Island, Auckland (population 588,400), Wellington (175,500), Hutt (119,800), Hamilton (69,800), and Palmerston North (51,500); and in the South Island, Christchurch (258,200), Dunedin (109,900) and Invercargill (48,500).

Cargo statistics from the main ports for 1969 are: Whangarei 6,033,000 tons, Auckland 4,072, Tauranga 2,267, Napier 906, Wellington 3,172, Lyttelton (Christchurch) 1,727, Port Chalmers (Dunedin) 546, Bluff (Invercargill) 606. The principal airports are Auckland International Airport at Mangere with 8,500 feet of runway, Christchurch with 8,014 feet and 5,700 feet, and Wellington with 5,600 feet. Air New Zealand operates an international service and the National Airways Corporation provides a domestic service. In 1969 road mileage was 58,486, and there were 3,063 miles of 3 feet 6 inches gauge railway. The New Zealand Railways operate road/rail ferries between Wellington and Picton (in the South Island) and the Union Steam Ship Company operates a car ferry between Wellington and Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch. The New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation provides universal radio and television coverage.

The principal products and exports receipts for the year ending June 1969 were: wool ($212.6 million), meat ($309.5 million), butter ($114.7 million), cheese ($42.6 million), and hides, skins and pelts ($55.4 million). In the year ending March 1970 Government revenue was $1,282.5 million and expenditure $1,275.1 million. New Zealand is one of the largest exporters in the world of meat, dairy produce and wool and is heavily dependent on the export of pastoral products. There are probably more farm animals in proportion to population than in any other country. The value of goods exported forms a much higher percentage, about 20 per cent, of the gross national product than for most countries.

The Government plans to spend $870 million on power schemes during the 10-year period ending in 1976. This includes the completion of works already started and the capital expenditure on new works. Works in progress include the Manapouri (South Island) and Tongariro (North Island) hydro-electric projects. A 600 Mw coal-burning station at New Plymouth in the North Island, the estimated cost of which is $134 million, is being constructed. Coal from the South Island will be used. Investigations are being made to further the development of power from geo-thermal sources in the North Island.

Other developments already under way include: a $20 million natural gas project at Kapuni in the North Island: an iron and steel works near Auckland using iron sand from West coast beaches as raw material (stage one costing approximately $35 million); major port developments in the four main ports in connection with container handling and a $95 million aluminium smelter at Bluff.

HISTORY

New Zealand was first discovered and settled by the ancestors of its present Polynesian inhabitants some time before A.D. 1000. Over the centuries further immigrants arrived; and as their numbers increased they spread over the North Island until the whole island was divided up among a number of tribal communities, each under its own chief, each claiming descent from one or other of the crews of the canoes which had brought their ancestors from overseas. The South Island, where the climate was less congenial, was more sparsely inhabited; but at the time when contact with Europe began, is is estimated that the total population may have been more than 100,000 persons. The name Maori, meaning 'normal' (indigenous) person, used to describe these peoples, did not come into use until the nineteenth century.

The first European to sight New Zealand, on 13th December 1642, was the Dutchman Abel Janzoon Tasman. An employee of the Dutch East Indian Company, he was searching on behalf of the Company in Java for the legendary southern continent which geographers then believed must exist in the southern hemisphere. He charted part of the west coast of the South Island, and, hoping that he had found part of the continent he was seeking, named it Staaten Landt, that being the name of land discovered south of South America and believed to be part of the same continent. When the latter land was found to be an island, the new land was renamed Niew Zeeland, after the Dutch province. Tasman found the inhabitants hostile and the land poor; no further European visitor touched its shores for over a century.

The next visitor was Lieutenant, later Captain, James Cook, preceding the Frenchman de Surville by only two months. Cook, who was sailing under the auspices of the Royal Society and the Admiralty, with the scientist Sir Joseph Banks on board, had made a further search for the legendary continent before sailing west to look for the land which Tasman had discovered. On 7th October 1769 he sighted the eastern shores of the North Island, and in the months that followed circumnavigated the country and brilliantly charted its shores, proving that it consisted of two main islands. He was followed later by other explorers, Marion du Fresne, Crozet, d'Entrecasteaux and Vancouver, among others.

Cook found the inhabitants generally friendly; and his reports of good harbours, of the abundance of seals, and of the existence of timber and flax, attracted the attention of sealers and traders. Many of these came from the flourishing community growing up at Sydney across the Tasman Sea; but the

existence of whales brought also whalers from America, Britain and France. Among the first settlers were the missionaries, organized initially by the Reverend Samuel Marsden from New South Wales, who aimed to assist the Maoris and to introduce European farming. At the end of the 1830s a slump in New South Wales increased the inflow of settlers, and by 1839 it was estimated that there were 2,000 of them, and that 130 ships were calling annually at the Bay of Islands.

The arrival of sailors, traders, missionaries and settlers in a land lacking an established administration and a rule of law, and their inter-relationship with the Maoris, whose traditional customs began to break down under the impact of association with the West, gave rise to problems which the British Government were at first reluctant to face. Cook's declarations of British sovereignty in 1769 and 1770 were repudiated; and as late as 1828 New Zealand was named in a British Act as a place not under British sovereignty. However, the need for action led the Governor of New South Wales to take, or be given, powers to try to maintain order. In 1814 Thomas Kendall, a missionary, was made a Justice of the Peace to assist in bringing British offenders to justice in the courts of New South Wales; and the Reverend John Gare Butler was made a Magistrate in 1819 with jurisdiction over the British settlements. In 1828 the jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales was extended to deal with all kinds of offences committed by British subjects within the islands of New Zealand. In 1832 James Busby was appointed as British Resident at the Bay of Islands. His appointment indicated that the British Government still looked upon New Zealand as an independent country, but it ignored the fact that there was no central Maori Government with whom he could deal, and that he had no means of supporting his authority. Two years later, in 1835, as a counterblast to the activities of the French Baron de Thierry, Busby convened an assembly of chiefs who signed a Declaration of Independence which at least made it appear that there was some central Maori authority in North Island. Finally, pressure by settlers, traders and missionaries, and the clear need to protect the Maoris and to control the settlers, who were about to be re-inforced by settlers sent by Edward Wakefield's New Zealand Association, led the British Government to intervene more directly. Letters Patent of 1st June 1839 authorised the Government of New South Wales to include within the boundaries of that Colony any territory in New Zealand that might be acquired in sovereignty; and Captain Hobson landed in the Bay of Islands on 29th January 1840 and assumed the office of Lieutenant-Governor. Hobson was instructed to treat with the Maoris as an independent nation for recognition of the Queen's sovereignty over the whole of the country or over any parts which they might be willing to cede. A meeting of Chiefs was held at Waitangi on 5th February, and on the 6th February 1840 forty-six head chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi ceding sovereignty to Queen Victoria; and their example was followed by many others. Finally, on 21st May, Hobson issued two proclamations, one declaring British sovereignty over the North Island by virtue of the cession of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the other over all the islands of New Zealand from 34° 30′ N. to 47° 10′ S., and from 166° 5′ E. to 179° E. by virtue of the right of discovery by Cook. This strip in fact included not only Fiji but the Marshall Islands and even Wake. New Zealand remained as part of New South Wales until 3rd May 1841, on which date Hobson took the oath as first Governor in the new capital city of Auckland. The boundaries were, however, later amended.

The signing of the Treaty of Waitangi is celebrated annually on 6th February (Waitangi Day).

The date on which Queen Victoria assumed the sovereignty of New Zealand also marked the beginning of the ‘hungry forties' in Britain where many of those displaced by the industrial revolution felt that their only hope for the future was to emigrate. The propaganda of the New Zealand Company, which had obtained a Royal Charter in 1840, turned attention to the opportunities which might exist in the new Colony with its temperate climate; and the stream of immigrants into New Zealand was such that by 1858 the newcomers had begun to outnumber the Maoris. Many of these settlers were assisted by the New Zealand Company until it lost its Charter in 1850. These European New Zealanders pressed in on the Maoris, and despite the efforts of the British Government, which until 1862 alone had the right to purchase land, disputes arose, resulting in greater unity among the Maoris, in a stiffening of their resistance to encroachment and finally in the Maori wars from 1860 to 1872. The defeat of the Maoris appeared likely at first to be disastrous for them; but the realisation by the now much more populous race that both had their part to play in the future of the country led to improved relations, to the greater integration of the Maori people into the life of the country, to returning pride in their Maori heritage and to an increased birthrate. The hopes of quick prosperity held out to its settlers by the New Zealand Company were not at first realised. Timber and flax remained important articles of export, but wool soon became still more important. Meat was exported to the gold miners in Australia; and the discovery of gold in Otago in 1865 not only itself increased prosperity but led to an influx of miners to provide an additional market for the farmers. The slump of the 1880s was lightened by the departure to England in 1882 of the first ship carrying refrigerated meat, and this was the herald of a prosperity built on wool, meat and dairy produce which, with an interval during the great slump, has continued until the present.

The development of the country was furthered during the 1870s by the financial policy of Julius (later Sir Julius) Vogel who borrowed on a large scale to develop government-controlled communications and to double the population through immigration schemes; but this policy, while bringing the provinces closer together, also aggravated the effects of the slump. During the 1890s Richard (later Sir Richard) Seddon brought in a series of laws dealing among other things with land, income tax, old age pensions, factory conditions, and industrial arbitration; laws which were to make New Zealand for a time the most radical state in the world. The First World War brought New Zealand for the first time on to the world stage and to a full realization of her nationhood. The development of New Zealand into the first Welfare State gained momentum from 1936. The Second World War brought New Zealand still more into the world arena, and the war with Japan stressed the importance of her role in East Asia and the Pacific. This was reinforced by participation in military operations in Korea, Malaysia and Vietnam. New Zealand has taken her full part in United Nations Affairs. Under the Colombo Plan substantial assistance has been given to the developing countries of South East Asia.

A British Protectorate was established over the Cook Islands in 1888, and the group was administered through the Governor of New Zealand until October 1900. These islands lie between 8° and 17° S. latitude and 156° and 170° W. longitude. The group was annexed to Her Majesty's dominions in October 1900. By a Proclamation dated 10th June 1901 the boundaries of New Zealand

were further extended from 11th June 1901 by inclusion of the Cook Islands. Niue (Savage) Island, geographically within the Cook group, although administered separately by New Zealand, was also included. The Cook Islands became self-governing in July 1965, but remain in free association within New Zealand.

Western Samoa (or Navigators' Islands), together with some small islets, lying between 13° and 15° S. latitude and 171° and 173° W. longitude, formerly in the possession of Germany, was occupied by New Zealand in August 1914. A Mandate for the government of the Territory by New Zealand was approved by the Council of the League of Nations in December 1920. In December, 1946 the General Assembly of the United Nations approved a Trusteeship Agreement which replaced the Mandate. Western Samoa ceased to be a Trust Territory and became an independent country on 1st January 1962. Under a Treaty of Friendship which came into force on 8th March 1962, New Zealand affords Western Samoa assistance in the conduct of foreign relations.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

By the Proclamation of 21st May 1840 New Zealand became a dependency of New South Wales, and the laws of New South Wales were made applicable so far as they were appropriate. However, by Charter of 16th November in the same year, made under a Statute passed on 17th August, New Zealand became a separate colony, although the laws of New South Wales remained temporarily in force. The North Island, the South Island and Stewart Island (named after an unsuccessful flax planter) were renamed New Ulster, New Munster and New Leinster; an Executive Council, consisting of the Governor, the Colonial Secretary, the Attorney-General and the Treasurer was formed; and the Governor was authorised to set up a Legislative Council to make laws and ordinances for the peace and good government of the Colony. This Charter was promulgated on 3rd May 1841, and the Legislative Council was duly formed, consisting of three officials and three senior Justices of the Peace. The Council met twice, passed sufficient legislation to enable the New South Wales legislation to be repealed, and went into recess.

When Captain (later Sir George) Grey became Governor in 1845 there was pressure for a greater measure of popular representation, and a new Charter, dated 23rd December 1846, proposed to divide the Colony into two Provinces, one being named New Ulster, consisting of the whole of North Island other than the district around Wellington, and the other New Munster, which covered the rest. It was the intention to appoint Lieutenant-Governors to each Province and to set up not only a central General Assembly, with an elected House of Representatives, but also Provincial Councils, which, too, would have elected Houses of Representatives. Owing to fears that the Provincial Councils might override the interests of the Maoris this new Constitution was never brought into force. The Colonial Legislative Council was therefore revived and passed the Provincial Legislative Councils Ordinance, setting up nominated Provincial Councils with unofficial majorities. Since the composition of the New Ulster Provincial Legislative Council was almost the same as that of the Colonial Legislative Council, the former never met.

On 30th June 1852 the British Parliament passed an Act to 'Grant a Representative Constitution to the Colony of New Zealand'. The number of Provinces was increased from two to six, the Provinces being Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington, Nelson, Canterbury and Otago. In the centre, the General Assembly

« PrejšnjaNaprej »